Tom R

I enjoyed this. It was one of those puzzles where after the first pass of Across Clues I had maybe three fills. Thought ‘there goes the streak’. And then slowly, inch by inch, it starts to come together. At the 3/4 mark I thought, ‘How did I get this far?’. And then it was done. Quite satisfying.

Wow. A lot of emotion today. I’ll add mine. I LOVED it! I thought it was quite clever and a nice change from the rebuses usually found on a Thursday.

Solved it. But count me in the group that abhors crossing Spanish words with Tamil or Chinese words. Why not just do the whole thing in a foreign language? It’s simply random letters at some point. Ooh, how fun. 24A: Nine letter word in a language. 33D: Thirteen letter word in a language.

It’s interesting that some people think doing something hard should always be ‘fun’. Climbing a mountain or running a marathon can be very hard and painful; many times the participant is not having any fun. But there can come great joy at the satisfaction of completing a very arduous, even grueling task.

Having spent time on farms as a kid I was curious who would ever think Baling is synonymous with Haying. The only use of hay as a verb I’d ever heard was feeding cows - we need to hay the cattle. So I tried umpteen searches for a source to say to bale and to hay meant the same thing. Nada. I did get results that definitively said they’re not the same thing. I get constructors like to stretch things, but shouldn’t there be at least one example of the usage somewhere in human history? Otherwise we can hay words to have any meaning we want. See? I just did it!

The best part of this puzzle was that it caused me to look up Ijeoma Oluo. Now I’m buying her book. Thank you Carly!

Since the App has no support - it sends you to the NYT News side - I’ll put it here in hopes that someone at the App side reads these. If I want to see a puzzle I’ve completed wouldn’t you think I’d click on that day’s puzzle? Thats from a list of puzzles that displays whether the puzzle is complete, how long it took and whether the streak is intact. So I click on the puzzle. Do I see the puzzle? No. I get a screen that has NO new information but does have another button to see the puzzle. So I click on that. Do I see the puzzle? No. I get a screen with Stats about the puzzle. There’s a STATS selection from the first screen to get me to this information if that’s what I wanted to see. Clearly I don’t since I didn’t select that from the main screen. I don’t need to see CONGRATULATIONS YOU FINISHED THE PUZZLE. I knew that from the first screen. Duh. So I close this second completely useless screen to get to the puzzle. And every puzzle that I want to see I have to do this. Is hitting three buttons instead of one a major drag on my life? No. But it is indicative of the NYT not paying any attention to their users. Which brings me back to why this comment is here. The NYT Games app has a FEEDBACK choice but it takes you to the News side of the business. Really? Love your games. Hate your app.

Wow! That was a tough one. More than double my usual time as I really struggled in the NW. And confused FENdi for FENTY for a long time. It is interesting to me that on these difficult (by design) puzzles there’s a common theme in the comments that follows the form: I did not get the answer from that clue therefore that clue was somehow unfair/inaccurate. What occurs to me is how many times I do get the answer from a clue others find unfair, or how many others get the answer when I swear it’s unfair. Maybe our own ability to solve isn’t the best indicator for whether a clue is/isn’t fair. The nerd that I am would love to see stats from the app ranking each clue/answer by how many people looked up (on the app) some or all of the clue, or used Check Puzzle to correct guesses. That would help me see if the tough ones for me are the tough ones for everyone.

We can thank Mr. Bond for ruining martinis for several generations. “Shaken, not stirred” elicited gasps in the 60s because that was how you ruined the drink. Despite his tuxedo it showed Bond to be a ruffian underneath it all. And to this day bartenders ruin perfectly good alcohol by shaking drinks and ‘bruising’ the alcohol with a million bubbles of air that dull the taste. People fork over for expensive gin and then ask the bartender to make sure they can’t actually taste what they’re paying for. There’s a reason old time drink mixing sets had a stir stick.

That was hard. That was very satisfying.

App Suggestion to the Editors: There are often times when I simply don’t understand the fill and it’s not explained by Deb. I have to believe, from the comments often, that I’m not alone in this. It would be very helpful, especially on the more difficult puzzles, if the app included the option to “Explain Clue”. I have to believe you’re already discussing amongst yourselves why each clue is appropriate, so why not include a blurb explaining each one? What was the rationale, or the misdirection? It could be part of the drop down menu that includes the various REVEAL options. Certainly, explaining the clue would end ‘streaks’. But I would use it routinely after solving a puzzle.

For a minute I thought the straight line through the double o’s was short and depicted a toothpick through the two olives in his martini.

I did a Google search for Unreliable Narrator. The book wasn’t anywhere near the top of the results. I looked on Amazon and only 32 people had reviewed it. My cousin’s book that no one has read has more family and friends reviews. I search NYT Bestsellers. Not there. I get Fridays are obscure, but we’re drifting into the realm of clues that read “14 random letters”.

As one who never played Mario can someone explain the squares with question marks? I thought (on the app) they’d transform into something once the puzzle was solved, but they didn’t. Are they merely decoration?

@DebAmlen No, the letters don’t disappear on the app. They stay as doubles. Which is really confusing since a single letter would be doubled or be nothing.

If the clue is a gerund must not the answer be a gerund? Running, not moving: IDLING. Run, not move: IDLE.

I suppose I haven’t read the comments in a few months. Now every third comment has ‘emu [something]’ at the end. I’ve googled it and found nothing. What does this refer to?

Confused by how SWEETY is ‘in one spelling’ (11D). Isn’t that the only spelling?